One of the most effective lead generators for apartment rentals comes from “For Rent” signs on buildings. Tenants know to look for rental signs on buildings and landlords know to post rental signs. Moreover, the characteristics of the surrounding neighborhood are, and always will be, an important consideration for people looking to rent an apartment. Prospective renters will continue to travel through neighborhoods when planning to rent and will continue to be exposed to rental signs as they do so. Thus, “For Rent” signs will always be a great means to advertise and market rental properties. Rental signs can also be a good source for a landlord to provide information to prospective tenants. However, the amount of information that a landlord can put on a rental sign is limited.
Other existing methods of marketing and advertising apartments allow landlords to provide more information about the property to prospective tenants than can fit on a sign. A landlord may: 1) hire a broker to list with a Multiple Listing Service (MLS); 2) pay for an ad online or in a newspaper; or 3) use a free internet based service to list their apartment. However, these methods also have limitations.
First, a hired broker who lists apartments in an MLS is typically engaged as the exclusive broker for that property. The broker is paid when the apartment is rented, even if another broker brought the actual tenant to the transaction. Brokers pay to be members of an MLS and must abide by its rules. One of the rules for an MLS limits the number of postings that may be made for a particular property to only one. Listings must also be complete. They must include an address for the property, the number of bedrooms, the number of bathrooms and the square footage, along with other information. The information in MLS systems is generally very reliable. The MLS monitors the information and the brokers to ensure compliance with the rules. Those who violate the rules are subject to fines and may ultimately have their accounts suspended. Consequently, landlords who want to lease their property must pay a commission. Those who do not want to pay a commission are not allowed to use the MLS.
Second, landlords will often pay to run ads in the newspaper or on some internet sites, however, while the landlords are able to list as many ads as they wish, they must pay for each one. The required payment limits the number of ads that are placed for a single property.
Third, the popularity of the internet has provided a new mechanism for marketing and advertising rental properties by using websites to post listings for free. For example, craigslist.com (Craigslist) has become the dominant site for listing and searching for apartments in many markets and is representative of the prior art of websites used to market rental properties. Craigslist allows users to post ads for free in most markets, and numerous landlords and third-party rental agents use this website. However, Craigslist and other websites have two major problems: 1) they allow multiple postings of the same apartment on the website without reasonable limitations; and 2) they do not have an effective search method. Craigslist tries to prevent an individual from posting more than one ad for the same apartment. However, its attempts have been unsuccessful. Many individuals use multiple email addresses and slightly different descriptions to post multiple ads for the same apartment. Further, many different rental agencies market the same apartment. Each agent in the agency can post multiple times for the same apartment. A single apartment will often have twenty postings at a time and can easily have one hundred. Craigslist has been unable to stop these multiple postings, and it makes the website very difficult to use. Also, Craigslist does not have an effective search method. Searches are done by keyword, number of bedrooms, rent and pet policy. This is not an effective way for prospective tenants to locate a desired apartment because these are the only search criteria. One cannot search by a particular neighborhood, a particular block in a neighborhood or a particular feature other than those mentioned, such as air conditioning, etc. Also, Craigslist does not require the results of a search to be related to a particular address and it cannot return results in a mapped format. It is especially difficult with so many duplicate postings. The large number of duplicate postings has made Craigslist virtually unusable in large urban areas. As such, the internet, rather than making it easier to rent an apartment, has actually made it more difficult.
While these means of marketing and advertising apartments can provide more information to prospective tenants, they do not allow one to have instant access to all available information about a property while traveling through a particular neighborhood in an easy to use format without the problems associated with duplicate data.
Although the prior art has involved various ways to manage property related information and to display that information to an end user, the prior art does not include systems and methods for creating electronic records and physical signage associated with the electronic records to market and advertise properties in a way that limits the duplication of records in the databases to make property searching easy for the prospective renter. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,636,803, issued to Hartz, Jr. et al., for “Real-Estate Information Search and Retrieval System” relates to a search and retrieval system including a data terminal that displays icons representing properties in a given real-estate market on a digital map. The icons are selectable so that, when selected, information derived from an MLS or other database is displayed in association with the map. In one embodiment, the data terminal is equipped with a GPS receiver and data-enabled mobile phone. The GPS receiver receives location data which is used by a processor to display an icon representing a current location of the terminal within the map. The data-enabled phone links the terminal to a remote server or database of property information, which may also be displayed when property icons are selected on the map. The property information may include media data to provide a visual depiction of the property icons selected.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,747,636, issued to Price et al., for “System for Providing Information to Local Real Estate Purchaser” relates to a real estate point of sale system with optical indicia on a sign. One at the point of sale may capture the indicia using the camera on a portable phone. Information from the picture is sent to a server, and used to retrieve and return information about the property.
United States Patent Application number 2011/0289009 by Rankin, J R. et al., for “Apparatuses, Methods and Systems for an Activity Tracking and Property Transaction Facilitating Hub” relates to contact management apparatuses, methods and systems that facilitate the generation, evaluation, and recording of information and activities related to property transactions and associated communications. A property marketing tool may be configured to generate marketing materials such as web pages, PDF documents, flyers and/or other printed documents or to generate a one dimensional or two dimensional barcode and/or the like, the scanning of which may cause the automatic linking of a mobile electronic device to a webpage displaying property information. United States Patent Application number 2011/0289010 by Rankin, J R. et al., for “Apparatuses, Methods and Systems for an Activity Tracking and Property Transaction Facilitating Hub User Interface” relates to customizable mapping of spatiotemporal information in an integrated customer relationship management and real estate listing system with optimized scheduling of activities and/or appointments, access to and display of contact information and dynamic sorting and filtering of searchable data and also discloses the marketing tool described above.
While the prior art reveals apparatuses, systems and methods for the entry, retrieval and display of real estate related information on a mobile electronic device in response to scanning a code on a sign, the prior art does not reveal systems or methods of controlling the duplication of data to prevent such duplication from affecting system performance and ease of use. Accordingly, it would be desirable to improve the end user experience by controlling the duplication of data to prevent such duplication from affecting system performance and ease of use and to allow the duplication of data when such duplication may enhance the end user experience and not affect system performance and ease of use. The inventions discussed in connection with the described embodiment address these and other deficiencies of the prior art.
The features and advantages of the present inventions will be explained in or apparent from the following description of the preferred embodiment considered together with the accompanying drawings.